An interview I did with Keith Daniels of the counter-culture site Suicide Girls is now up on the SG website.
I’ll be clear: that page should be OK, but the site itself may be somewhat more than NSFW, in much the same way that standing a meter away from a supernova is somewhat more than Not Safe For Staying a Solid.
I’ve been a fan of SG for a while – it gives a strong, nerdy voice to decidedly non-mainstream thinking in a wide variety of topics, and the interview is like that. We covered a lot of ground: Hubble, NASA, skepticism, politics, life on other planets, the media, and of course Not Being a Dick (while still maintaining a motivating level of anger and passion).
Clearly, after ten years or more of doing interviews, I still haven’t learned how to make a succinct, pithy point. And while I do suffer a bit from verbal diarrhea, I’ll note that some topics deserve more subtlety and longer discussion. Sound bites tend to gloss over vital details, and not everything can be adequately covered by a bumper sticker.
To give you a taste, here’s part of what I said about skepticism:
It’s really easy to fool people, and it’s really easy to fool yourself, and if you use these skeptical ideas, you find out what the truth is. The whole idea of skepticism and science is to find out what’s most likely to be true, and what’s most likely not to be true. That’s the goal: to not fool ourselves, and that’s where the real power of skepticism is. That’s why it bugs me when people think it’s a negative thing – it’s not! It’s the most positive thing we have. It is the search for the real, objective truth.
There are tons of fascinating interviews on SG, including talks with folks like Felicia Day, Danny Pudi (Abed from “Community”), comic book writer (and skeptic!) Gail Simone, and many more. You’ll happily lose a day reading them, I promise!
